Announcing Score7

I’ve started a new blog called Score 7, which will rail against dissapointing trends in video game media and celebrate the unsung heroes.  If you’re interested in the growth of this industry too, take a look:

Score 7

I’ll still publish to this blog about general digital design stuff, I’ll just have them going in parallel.

Filed under: folly, revolutions, user-centred

The curse of the middling score

A game with an original premise, intriguing storytelling, artfully crafted visuals, an edgy atmosphere and OK controls recently came out: Cursed Mountain for the Wii. Unfortunately it has been consigned to the graveyard of the middling score.  That’s an ‘OK’ score – not bad, not great – and let’s face it most people looking at game reviews don’t usually get past the big number at the top, particularly if it’s not a high one. With this sort of take on games owning the dialog – there’s even a ‘rankings‘ website to average the scores – the equation is weighted heavily in favour of a few exceptional games (in the eyes of the critics at least) and leaves little room for the games that don’t make the highest mark.

I feel bad for the game developer who probably put a couple of years into making the game. More importantly though, I feel worse about all the people that would probably enjoy the game for it’s original premise, intriguing storytelling, artfully crafted visuals, and aren’t put off by the control scheme. We need to move on from the score as the be-all-end-all of game reviews.  Change up the way we talk about new games so that people can sift through the variety that’s out there and pick out the ones that are right for them on specific merits.

Filed under: revolutions, trends , curse, cursed mountain, game, gamerankings, reviews, scores, wii

It’s the era of the spatial UI

There’s a quiet user experience revolution going on, and although many people are aware of it on an ‘oh that’s neat’ level, I predict that we’ll see a snowball effect of user experiences in 3 dimensions.

The two big players that are bringing spatial UI into the mainstream are the iPhone and Wii.  Although iPhone is primarily a touch-driven device, anyone who has delved into the world of downloadable apps will find some very interesting uses of it’s spatial awareness features: Games that detect tiny changes in tilt angle for driving a car or balancing a pile of blocks, and apps that change to a different mode based on which way up you are holding it. 

You’re most likely already familiar with the Wii-mote and it’s spatial capabilities.  There are actually two features built into the Wii-mote: tilting (like the iPhone) and also pointing at the screen.  As you play through Wii games the controller takes on different modes – at one point you’ll be pointing at what to do next, then you’ll be tilting it to steer a vehicle, then waving it in ‘gestures’.  There’s been a deluge of sub-par games on the Wii since it became such a success, but look carefully and you’ll find games with highly innnovative interactions. 

Spatial UI has been beautifully brought together in the Siftables prototype, whereby small independent computers react to each other depending on each other’s roles and physical relationships.  Watch the presentation at TED and you’ll see it passes the ultimate test: It delights children. So this may not be a consumer device that people will run out and buy tomorrow, but the potential for UI innovation is fascinating.

Spatial experiences are going mainstream with 3D movies.After years sidelined at IMAX and amusement parks the 3D movie is back with a vengeance and it seems like every animated movie is now releasing in 3D. [update:] James Cameron in a recent Time article claims 2D is inherently harder for the brain to process, as opposed to 3 dimensions which the brain is designed to process.

So what’s next?  It’s hard to predict what will be a good spatial experience, how best to use the new technology and we’ll evidently need a period for people to just play with it and see what works and what doesn’t (there’s certainly been a fair share of both so far).  If you have the opportunity to build spatial awareness into your next product, I advise you to embrace it with fervour but also expect to prototype and go through a few iterations before you get it right.

Filed under: 3D, general, revolutions, trends, user interface , 3D, gestures, imax, Innovation, iphone, point, siftables, spatial, tilt, ui, UX, wii

Making sense of 3D Flash interfaces

You must have seen the 3D web and software design trend, starting with Apple’s 3D-esque interface designs of recent years, and lately boosted by the impressive PaperVision 3D for Flash.  They make for beautiful, layered experiences and the sense of depth is intuitively pleasing. However, it doesn’t take much to turn a trend like this into a for-the-sake-of-it gimmick. 

The key to using 3D well is to think about the psychological value of 3D to a user, and not just turning things into 3D willy nilly.  People have portions of their brains that are dedicated to processing 3D visual scenes, and tapping into that is a powerful way to communicate things that have been tricky with 2D design:

Movement patterns provide a major cue in 3D – when objects move in unison (eg, rotating in a circle) there’s evidently a relationship between them.  The path in space taken by the objects give up clues to whether there’s a finite set and how fast you are moving through them. Apple’s ‘coverflow’  carousel is a prominent example of using movement in space but the approach could be applied in many different ways.  

Sense of place is communicated on multiple levels – 2D experience design relies on esoteric navigation constructs such as tabs and breadcrumbs to show people where they are in the overall structure of content.  Although many are now common across hundreds of websites, they take some learning and are often unintuitive.  In contrast, when you’re looking at a 3D scene with objects located in relative space the structure is immediately evident and familiar.  

Proximity = relevance – when you have many spatial constructs, the ones in close proximity are the ones that you assume are relevant to the matter at hand.  In a 2D space, this type of approach becomes a difficult task of managing clutter. Using size, location and perspective in 3D space is powerful for showing relevance, not just because of the extra dimensions but also because our brains are designed to process things that way.

Real world rules apply – unlike unique constructs built for UIs, the rules of 3D are the rules of the real world, so it’s easy to know whether you are breaking the rules based on what would make sense in the world: Objects shouldn’t appear out of nowhere, things should move predictably and with a sense of weight/mass, and so on.

Bonus: Lessons from 3D games have been learnt over years of experimentation and evolution that can now be leveraged in UI design. Video games have been building complex 3D interactive experiences for years and UI designers can actually claim some reference value from those hours of playing!

Filed under: 3D, creative delivery, information architecture, revolutions, style, trends, user interface, user-centred , 3D, design, flash, papervision3d, psychology

Xbox 360 New Interface Design

So apparently the Xbox 360 user interface is getting a total overhaul.  I’m impressed at how aggressive they are about innovating the product experience with this move.  It’s very daring, and certainly a first among game consoles, to completely change the UI from what people have become familiar with over the past years.  

We’ve entered a new era of in-life OS upgrades for online consumer products (thinking of the major game consoles, Tivo, the iPhone and iPods).    Although the benefits are evident with each valuable feature added, I’m perturbed by the overall experience:

• The products are a work in progress – I’m not entirely OK with buying at full price an unfinished product
• Updates are not always for the better – for example, the Tivo interface has been on a downward slide with each new addition 
• The upgrade processes are mostly laborious and time-consuming – can’t they update themselves without any work on my part?

Back to the Xbox’s new interface.  Although I’m pleased to see that they’re giving it a clean-up, I’m somewhat underwhelmed on first impression:

• Looks a lot like coverflow - positive points for looking good but negative points for being derivative
• Bright white and new avatars – seem inappropriate for the established gaming user base and reminiscent of the Wii
• Fit for purpose – coverflow seems overly simplistic given the inherent tasks of managing messages, game lists, etc.

We may be seeing phase 2 of the Master Plan here – Xbox was originally developed as a trojan horse for Microsoft to get into the living room. With this UI change and the growing video rental capabilities of the console it appears they are finally making good on that strategy.  However I am skeptical that this device, which has established itself as the choice of the hardcore gamer, and which sits firmly in the ‘Games’ aisle of major stores, will transition to a general entertainment device. If they pull that off it will be a stroke of genius.

Filed under: 3D, folly, presentation, revolutions, style, user interface, user-centred , announcement, engadget, in-life, strategy, trojan horse, user interface, xbox 360